THAT is totally HILARIOUS.

Because do you know how opinionated I am? Oh yes. I am a Quiet and Unassuming Wallflower. Until there’s a keyboard involved.

I guess it’s partly the ongoing health stuff and how it wears me out. It’s also partly the ongoing troll stuff, and how writing anything of significance and purpose online is like writing a book: there will be really arrogant people who are determined not to listen effectively and have to make sure I know all of that about them.

Basically, I’m too busy doing Real Things to entertainingly toy with arrogant and trollish crap-factories the way I used to, which makes online a lot less fun.

As far as topics that really, really matter so much that I just have to write about them–I’m sorry, friends. My world has gotten very small. Pain management is the only one, and it does not inspire me to write about it.

Heck, it even depresses me, let alone people who have to listen to me. And I love you too much to depress you like that. (Have I told you I have to get knocked out cold to get a wrecked molar removed? And that the stress on my damaged jaw joint could result in another several weeks or months of physio and extreme cranial pain? No. I haven’t. Because I love you too much. We’ll do that convo when we’re 95 and living in the nursing home, darling.)

So since we’re not 95 (are we? Don’t let me be politically incorrect here), SciendaQ is available for purchase just a tad early on Barnes & Noble. And yes, I promise, the writers in this issue still rock as much as they did last time I mentioned it. Please support literary awesomeness!

And (painful reality check), making a list does not make things happen.

You and I make things happen.

The truth is, To-Do Lists can make one want to yell. They can make one forget the magic of other people’s activities and intentions, because other people aren’t conforming to the List’s demands. To-Do Lists can cause resentment of life circumstances while obscuring the beauty.

I’m a lifelong learner, spontaneous-moment-lover, and unschooler of four kids–which means not only can life not be planned, we deliberately aim to let it flow organically instead.

So, for people like me, To-Do-Lists can generate guilt and frustration, which really wrecks the spontaneity of the moment. I rarely write out a To-Do List. It will only madden me. Besides, there are a lot of ways to get around a personal disconnect from the To-Do List worldview.

1. Don’t assign deadlines, just cross things off whenever you get to them.
2. Regulate life by the List.
3. Exercise copious self-martyrdom and let EVERYONE know how hard life is, that the To-Do List did not get completed today. SO hard. SO sad. (While this is some people’s idea of a fun time, I start to hate myself the moment To-Do Pity creeps into my personal paradigm. Bleah, I turn into such a drag, I can’t even stand me.)
4. KEEP A TO-DONE LIST INSTEAD.

I usually have a To-Do List in my head. it looks a lot like Method #1 above. But because the wheel-spinning feeling of “whenever I get there” started to drive me crazy, I decided to trade it in for two other things.

One is a wish list. Every time the future bothers me, or I find myself mulling some unrequited goal or dream, I write it on my wish list. Maybe I’ll get there, or maybe the journey will take me in another direction. Wishes are much less obligatory than goals.

The second is a To-Done List. Here, for example, is my To-Done List from last Saturday:

–Slept 8 hours (this is an achievement for me)

–Took Child #3 for music lesson

–Delivered freezer food to a family experiencing loss (very sad)

–Made lunch and entertained my senile, crabby and beloved grandmother at the same time–takes much energy, one must speak simply and carry the conversation because she’s forgetful and doesn’t form coherent sentences well anymore (draining but satisfying)

–Talked to my parents about their retirement dreams

–Ran out of gas 4 miles from town in a Canadian January with no cell phone, got myself and my 2 younglings rescued, got the car back on the road, got home, dropped off kids, called husband, had meltdown, returned to town on original mission of fueling up car in order to make it to church and funeral the next day. I WIN. HA. Also I feel stupid, but who cares because I WIN.

–Told some people about my publishing project (somewhat nerve-wracking)

–Admired my daughters’ updated wardrobes–always make time for pretty shoes, good karma will result

–Talked to a friend about writing (yay!)

–Talked to very tired, frustrated husband several times–keeping life and each other from going off the rails

–Sat in on husband reading to the kids after supper

–Smooched husband, thus successfully repelling all remaining wandering past-bedtime children

–Went to bed, locked door, ravished husband.

And then I realized that the day may have involved some crap, but I ROCKED that crap. The drained, wiped-out feeling is more often because I lived the day, not because I failed to.

A To-Done List does what a To-Do List can never do. It talks about what really happened today and how you handled it, not what you wanted to have happen and how you imagined yourself handling things that didn’t end up existing.

Things that don’t exist, don’t matter. The things that do exist are worth counting for what they are, not what they aren’t. I would much rather pass that daily value on to my children than the ability to write abstract notions in point form.

Making a list does not make things happen.

You and I make things happen.

That day that sucked? I’ll bet you the Eiffel Tower that you did carpe diem, whether the To-Do List happened or not.

You and I are not our goals, and they are not us. We are people getting down to the business of living, adapting and continuing through change.

So. What’s on your To-Done List?

Image credit: my dream shopping list by tanakawho on Flickr | License: CC BY 2.0

via Suzie on Twitter

Let’s talk about common misconceptions surrounding how to push one scene forward into the next one.

Cliffhangers are not: Cool-sounding/poetic concluding sentences, abrupt cut-offs in the middle of a round of action, or cutting away to a new scene or POV without some resolution of events in the current POV. Many writers think of cliffhangers in terms of copyediting: what does my last line sound like?

Cliffhangers are: an element of pacing. They raise a question that propels the reader into the next scene or chapter. Cliffhangers are a “plant,” in Jeff Gerke terms. We need to think of them as a structural element, rather than just a wordsmithing issue.

And the same is true of a hook line that opens the book or scene. It’s not just copyediting for a cute phrase turn. Our writerly instincts tell us it’s more, of course, but what is it?

As we’ll see, these things speak from genre, plot continuity, linkage between storylines, and character viewpoint. And that’s why to choose those words so carefully.

Chapter 1

This gun is not a gun.

Or such was Mr. Winser’s determined conviction when the youthful Alix Hoban…

Are you convinced yet? With this startling opener, LeCarre drags us into another international thriller, a genre where normally, we assume that the characters know and accept what guns are.

LeCarre proceeds to support his opening assertion by explaining in primarily narrative terms that Mr. Alfred Winser was a lawyer, and to a lawyer facts were there to be challenged. Since Mr. Alfred Winser is experiencing the unexpected presence of a gun in the hand of his business client, the youthful Alix Hoban, he does what lawyers do best. He attempts within his own mind to prove it inadmissible to the body of evidence.

LeCarre’s opening chapter is a story frame using the in medias res opening: he has started us at the inexplicable incident of Winser’s death, which actually occurs fairly far along in the story’s plot arc.

He makes what seems like free use of authorial intrusion, inserting snippets of commentary and omniscient viewpoint. However, he does so (as mentioned in our opening summary analysis) because he’s John LeCarre. And he is not being free or lazy; he’s being highly intentional with his exposition.

For one, this author has a career extending back to earlier conventions, when authorial voice was treated somewhat differently. He doesn’t have to prove to his editor that his ability with close third-person storytelling is unmarred by a youthful overexuberance that longs to chatter about the story instead of writing it.

His editor knows this because it’s obvious in his very careful use of expository narrative as a plot tool. Where it’s most efficient to introduce key elements via a narrator’s voice, LeCarre takes that liberty. His longtime readership is longtime used to it, because it used to be a much more common convention. He knows how to use a smattering of omniscient viewpoint to create a brief transcendence, a bird’s-eye view with emotional impact.

Also, to reiterate, he is LeCarre, and you, young novice, are not. People want to hear the famous author’s voice, to connect to his persona, whereas new up-and-comers must first earn that level of deep attachment from readers. Nowadays we have Twitter and blogs for that, and the book is supposed to stick to the vicarious experience delivered by the main character. But back in the day, it all came in a single package. And, if a writer becomes dead or famous enough that assistants handle his web presence, it still does come in that single package.

Prologue as First Chapter

By the end of the chapter, Mr. Winser is violently and compellingly dead somewhere outside Istanbul, and we are left with the hanging thread of

“a smear-faced boy peering down at him from a cleft between two promontories. He had big brown unbelieving eyes, like Winser’s when he was the same age, and he was lying on his stomach and using both hands as a pillow for his chin.”

This prologue-as-first-chapter does not represent an information dump of backstory, and certainly not an irrelevant minor character who merely happens to have a more interesting death than many other key events (both of which would indicate fatal storytelling flaws). Nor is this an inciting incident, in that it doesn’t launch a defined protagonist on his journey.

This is the or-else scenario: the very bad thing which will destroy the protagonist if he doesn’t win the day. This is the problem to be solved, on pain of death.

And the unknown boy? His presence has been planted in a significant place for later development, and he also provides the springboard into the next chapter.

Chapter 2

“Oliver Hawthorne. Come up here immediately, if you please. At the double. You’re wanted.”

This opening line is one of those that’s richer on a second and third read of the book. As we segue to a matronly English command, given as if to a child, we encounter words whose layers we don’t yet comprehend: you’re wanted.

We proceed to a tamer and gentler Chapter 2 in which we don’t yet realize we’re seeing the key setup for the story’s beautiful, deadly and highly emotional climax. Once again, LeCarre breaks the modern rules: the POV is still not the main character nor the antagonist.

However, we quickly realize the protagonist is present, because he’s described as different. He’s not just a reclusive curmudgeon: he’s a beloved one. He’s the “Ollie” for whom the housekeeper is yelling, a boarder whom she thinks of as shy, somewhat odd, strong and silent, but apparently also made of gold. The device of the housekeeper’s perspective is another one that’s more common in mid-twentieth-century fiction and earlier, and less tolerated in our allegedly enlightened era.

Halfway through the chapter, we come to our main character’s POV. He is a divorced, beaten-down children’s entertainer who lives in the boarding house and acts as a sort of father-figure to the housekeeper’s son Sammy. He has a birdcage with a vanishing canary, an Aladdin’s lamp, a ventriloquary raccoon who snipes at him constantly, and an outer garment that LeCarre names a gray-wolf coat. He has ignored the housekeeper’s summons to his banker’s phone call because he’s on his way to half a dozen engagements. Bouncy ball, magic beads, find the birdie, windmills of the mind.

He is the Prince of Shimmer, the unlikely rainmaker in their midst. He is a clumsy buffoon and therefore to be protected; he is a nimble god who can call down laughter, and enchant without destroying.

Enchant without destroying. This beautiful, mystical line stands out amidst hyperactive children, the spiel of Oliver’s routine, and a tackily flirtatious hostess. With this slight shift in language, woven into the rhythm of the magic show, the final conclusion of the story is planted in our minds. We just don’t know it yet.

Oliver hides within this illusory persona. A broken man, he makes balloon animals to keep his stress down. He memorizes magic tricks to keep his thoughts from dark, guilty places. He has invented himself a mask and wears it avidly. The one time this reclusive curmudgeon is whole is when he’s forgotten himself in the making of magic.

We can feel the opening of his character arc in the implications of these few facts. And we feel the undercurrents that will tow him into the maelstrom in the chapter’s closing lines:

Peering into the flickering haze, Oliver made out Arthur Toogood at the tea bar in the custody of the beaver-lamb coat. He was wearing a curly trilby and an upholstered ski jacket over his suit. The strobes were making a podgy devil of him while he grinned and flapped his rainbow hands to show he wasn’t carrying an offensive weapon.

Again, LeCarre’s choice of language is a careful balance of humorous, imaginative hyperbole and a more cynical perspective—Oliver’s, in both cases. Devil-clowns who might be carrying guns.

With that final detail of the character sketch, he assures us we are still in his type of domain, and leaves us wanting to learn exactly who our hero is and what he’s running from. Because we clearly sense it’s not just Toogood the banker. After all: this is LeCarre.

Winter may not end. One of these days, all hint of warmth will prove false. The sun may not rise. One of these days, our eyes will lose the ability to see it. All it takes is one cold finger down the spine from that old ghoul and we are half-drowned rats squealing in terror.

Burrow a little deeper, then. Add a few more comforts and try to clutter the landscape around us with all manner of riches, privileges, and manufactured self-martyrdoms in the pursuit of not embracing hopelessness. At least then we are dying for something of our choosing, however inane, instead of just dying. At least then the walking shell can put on a mock-up of spirit and soul.

I am one such shell, a half-drowned rat. I am floating near the bottom of a very long vertical tunnel, and I wish to heaven it were a well, because then it wouldn’t be so deep. It’s about a year long, comprising an agonized spring, a missing summer, a frozen autumn. And now, a snowless wasteland of a winter.

Every time I try to climb out of this tunnel, I fall back harder, it seems. I’m on a missing persons list, pinned to the wall and can’t escape. Flattened, monochrome, unable to push forward into full being and retake the shape of life.

People can see me there, tacked to the wall. A digital replica with a smile in place like it always was. Appearances are one thing. Breathing is another. The real me is at the bottom of the miles-long plunge.

It’s when I think of how I got here that I want to cry. By trying. Not trying to get here, trying to do what I know I should. Trying to live. A year of illness and broken bones has left me face to face with the Great Fear: maybe I won’t get back up.

I’m not done yet. I want it back. The sunshine. If my days can be shortened in a dark solstice, they can grow longer and warmer again.

I’m not convinced it’s sound, but the theory will do until disproven. It will have to do, because seasons are spinning past. And I barely notice from where I am.

I just wish I knew the mechanics of climbing out of a long, dark tunnel without a rope.

Seasons spin past. If my days can grow longer and warmer again, the rains can come again and fill even this pit, lift me up or drown me. There is no force on earth like the waters that wash all things into cleanliness or oblivion.

And if I can be lifted up, whether dead or alive in my soul, then I can see the sun again. The climb is not the task at hand. Death is here. Death is now, no matter how much we pay to decorate over it.

Living is dying. In the darkness, I am eyeball-to-eyeball with the specter that haunts us all: then why bother in the first place?

My last candle goes out.

In the waning of all self-made light, at the dark solstice, I am not sure I can answer that ghoul’s question in any inspiring way. I’m not sure I should; would it only be another blinker to shield the eyes within the ivory palace?

I have thought of lying down and not getting up again–the great fear that besets us all. I think often of surrender.

This is what makes a half-drowned rat squeal in terror. No one is listening. There is only the ghoul.

All I know with any concrete knowing is that we have it backwards, here at the height of history, where our palace walls are carefully padded with all manner of synthetic comfort, where we have made provision for the insanity deep down: buried it, caged it, pressed it flat, made it black-and-white and pinned it to the wall.

At the far end of the tunnel, looking up, there’s a window. I barely notice the seasons spinning by, but I’m not insensate yet. We have it backwards. The ancients felt and lived and breathe what we forget: Night is the beginning, not the end.

Even if I go blind, the rains will come.